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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWestern Express recovered through two very different paths after a March 3, 2020 tornado destroyed its Nashville headquarters and nearly all of its IT hardware. Its IBM Power 9 system, which ran the transportation-management and ERP workload, was already replicated to Atlanta. The VMware environment supporting Windows virtual machines was not. Most ERP users were operating again in about seven hours, while VMware workloads required emergency colocation and borrowed Dell servers. The company later added VMware disaster-recovery coverage after experiencing the consequences of leaving that environment unprotected.
What the tornado destroyed
The tornado struck Nashville shortly after midnight on March 3, 2020. According to David Sivils, vice president of IT at Western Express, the storm destroyed the company’s three-building corporate campus and nearly all of its IT hardware.
The environment had two main parts:
- An IBM Power 9 system running the legacy transportation-management and ERP system.
- About 14 commodity Linux servers, used mainly to run Windows virtual machines on VMware.
The disaster exposed a major difference in their protection: the IBM system had replication to Atlanta, but the VMware servers had no disaster-recovery site at the time.
The first recovery path: replicated IBM ERP systems
Atlanta brought the core workforce back quickly
Western Express had disaster recovery in place for the IBM environment. “We did have DR in place in Atlanta, where it was being replicated,” Sivils said in a November 16, 2020 interview with Data Center Knowledge.
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He said most of the workforce was back on the ERP side about seven hours after he received a 2 a.m. call from the company president:
“I got the call at two in the morning from the president, and in about seven hours we had most of our workforce up and going on the ERP side.”
The backup limited reported data loss
Western Express had backed up the servers at midnight. Sivils said the company lost about 30 minutes of data. That is the company’s account; the interview does not describe the backup architecture, retention, testing, or isolation well enough to independently assess its resilience.
Remote recovery introduced latency
Running from Atlanta restored access but did not reproduce the local experience. Sivils reported latency affecting some virtual machines. The performance problem continued until August 14, according to his account, while the company waited for a replacement production box for the IBM environment.
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The replacement process through the disaster-recovery provider and IBM took nearly six months. Sivils described that delay bluntly: “I think that took exorbitantly long. It took nearly six months and should not have taken that long, so I’m not happy.”
The second recovery path: emergency colocation for VMware
There was no prepared VMware failover site
Because the VMware servers had no disaster-recovery coverage, Western Express could not simply redirect those workloads to a ready secondary environment. The team had to find infrastructure while the primary site was unusable.
vXchnge provided an emergency location
The company found space at vXchnge’s downtown Nashville data center. Some servers were dried out, and Dell provided borrowed servers so the team could rebuild the VMware environment.
Matt Donnelly, a vXchnge account executive, recalled Sivils’ situation: “Matt, we’re standing here in a puddle of water. All of my servers are drenched. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Can you help me?” Donnelly said vXchnge would get the environment running in its data center as quickly as possible.
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Installation took about six hours
Pete McPeters, vXchnge’s director of operations, said the emergency installation took about six hours. Staff accelerated the work by locating suitable power whips already in the facility and repurposing older power-distribution units. That was dramatically faster than the provider’s typical process, which McPeters said generally took more than a month for assessment, contracts, and setup.
The borrowed-server VMware environment was running by early evening on the day of the tornado. That restored the workloads, but it was an emergency workaround rather than a preplanned failover design.
How the two recovery paths differed
| Dimension | IBM / ERP path | VMware path |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-disaster protection | Replicated to Atlanta | No disaster-recovery coverage at the time |
| Early recovery | Most ERP users operating in about seven hours, according to Sivils | Restored by early evening after emergency colocation and borrowed servers |
| Operational trade-off | Atlanta hosting caused latency; replacement production hardware took nearly six months | Required an emergency facility, dried equipment, and borrowed Dell servers |
| Later change | Replacement IBM production box was eventually obtained | Disaster-recovery coverage was added in the colocation environment |
Recovery extended beyond servers
The phone system was also destroyed
The tornado wiped out Western Express’s on-premises phone system. The company was only about 60% of the way through a move to cloud telephony, so the disaster forced it to accelerate that transition. This illustrates why a recovery plan limited to compute and storage can still leave a business unable to communicate.
Remote-work equipment became part of continuity planning
Sivils said the tornado-driven move toward remote work led Western Express to order computers, wireless devices, hotspots, headsets, monitors, keyboards, and mice before COVID-19 disruptions made some of those items difficult to obtain. That is his account of the timing at Western Express, not a general benchmark or proof that every company faced the same supply conditions.
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What this incident teaches about disaster recovery
Protect every workload, not just the most important platform
Replication for the IBM system produced a fast recovery for the ERP user base. The unprotected VMware environment required improvisation. A disaster-recovery inventory should identify each production workload, its dependencies, its recovery location, and the person or provider responsible for restoring it.
Separate recovery time from recovery completeness
Most ERP users were working in roughly seven hours, and VMware workloads were restored the same day. Yet latency persisted for months and replacement IBM hardware took nearly six months. A plan should define what “recovered” means: users logged in, acceptable performance, permanent production hardware, complete integrations, and normal communications are different milestones.
Include facilities and power details
The emergency colocation was possible partly because vXchnge could find compatible power whips and reuse older PDUs. Power connections, rack space, cooling, cabling, network handoffs, and access procedures should be documented before an emergency rather than discovered during one.
Make replacement hardware a tested dependency
Replication does not eliminate the need for physical replacement equipment. Western Express’s reported six-month wait for an IBM production box shows why contracts, lead times, compatible models, installation responsibilities, and temporary-capacity options belong in the recovery plan.
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Give communications their own recovery objective
The destroyed phone system and partially completed cloud-telephony migration demonstrate that voice service is an operational dependency. Recovery planning should cover phone numbers, call routing, emergency announcements, authentication, contact-center tools, and alternatives for employees working away from the office.
Test the plan under realistic conditions
The source describes what happened at one company; it is not an independently audited comparison or industry benchmark. Still, the sequence provides practical questions for an exercise:
- Can each workload be started at its recovery location?
- How much data would be lost after the last successful backup or replication point?
- Will remote hosting deliver acceptable latency for critical applications?
- Who can authorize emergency colocation and borrowed equipment?
- How quickly can compatible power, networking, and replacement hardware be supplied?
- How will employees and customers communicate if the office phone system is gone?
Where Western Express ended up
After the tornado, Western Express added disaster-recovery coverage for VMware in its colocation space. Sivils summarized the resulting position as: “We’re covered on both sides now.” The change addressed the central weakness revealed by the event: the company had protected its ERP platform but not the surrounding virtualized workloads that also supported operations.
The recovery story is therefore not simply that replication worked or that colocation was fast. It is that different systems followed different recovery paths, with different data-loss exposure, performance problems, hardware dependencies, and completion dates.
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